


star

by sylveonimbus (cloud_sakura)



Category: Free!
Genre: Depression, Epic Friendship, Gen, M/M, and dealing it with, matsuoka rin is the best qpp in the world: the saga, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 01:13:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4857587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloud_sakura/pseuds/sylveonimbus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a story about the sun and the stars</p><p>or, how matsuoka rin changes lives, and has his own changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





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**Author's Note:**

  * For [InkWitch (serkestic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/serkestic/gifts).



> i feel bad about not including lori+russell and gou's povs here, but honestly this was supposed to be a fun little thing, idk how it assumed this proportion. maybe i'll write that too, later. have fun, nerds.

sometimes sousuke will wake up and sit up on his bunk at the ass-crack of dawn, and while he's actually a morning person, no one wants to get up early on a sunday when they don't even have practice.

except rin is awake, and peering out of the cracked windowpanes, and the rising sun frames his hair like a halo when he turns around to meet sousuke's eyes and smile. "oh, you're awake! want to go for a run?"

sousuke wasn't, not really, but he is now; and he resolutely ignores the awakening of something else, somewhere deep in his chest no one has seen before rin came and the dawn broke and sunlight shone in through cracked glass.

“yeah,” he says. his voice sounds weird, gravelly, because he’s just woken up, but he couldn’t care less.

he’s glad rin is around for now, to wake him up when he doesn’t want to.

***

“trade?” rin asks, holding out his popsicle. “this one is too sweet.”

nagisa leans in, and pretends to slurp it down straight from rin’s hand, while he makes a disgusted face in the background. some mother across the street lets out a scandalized noise before dragging her child along with her. rin frowns at that, and then looks back at him. “does that happen often?”

nagisa wonders what he sees. a ten year old who wanted desperately to learn to swim so he could be friends with the coolest kids in the club? an insecure seventeen year old who had been sniffling over the phone for an hour about how everyone was too nice to him before rin dragged him out on a special movie date to shut him up? the desperately edgy nineteen year old with too many piercings and a bad reputation for being on the wrong side of the rainbow spectrum?

“not really,” is what he opts for, casually going back to his own popsicle. rin doesn’t even look all that outraged as he grabs rin’s as well. “people are gonna be weird, rin-chan, it’s a small town and they’ve seen me grow up. of course they’re gonna react like this.”

“you shouldn’t have to deal with this.” rin is obstinate about this, and he scowls deeply as another person sidesteps them. “it’s a fricking public park, there are heterosexual couples making out everywhere, you shouldn’t be ostracized for - for,” he struggles to find words, and nagisa finds it a little amusing. he wants to say, _this is how it works in here, rin-chan_ ; he’d like to think that rin has had it easy, but he knows very well that he hasn’t. knows what a big city can be like to little boys who don’t fit in. what a media circus it was when rin came out.

“it’s okay. i have you, don’t i?” he says cheekily, and rin rolls his eyes and outright glares at the next girl who sideeyes them. nagisa wonders if he _has_ him, sometimes, in every sense of the word, but he’s friends with a literal star, so he can’t ask for much. rin is a distant star, in more ways than one, but he’s also a supernova, shining more brilliantly than a sun ever can, and in some ways, that’s enough to make a difference.

***

it's a terrible day. he’s been running at full gas since six o clock and since he's not a morning person either way and mondays are the worst: he's seriously considering either quitting university in order to sell ramen (nagisa says that he knows someone who became a millionaire doing that, but then again, the source is _nagisa_ ) or maybe jump into the ocean. if he swims hard enough, maybe he'll sprout a tail and live in the ocean forever -

but he’s not haru, and not given to daydreams either, and since he’s not haru and not given to daydreams, _what_ is olympic champion matsuoka rin doing _waiting outside his door_?

makoto stops to gape at him, and rin shrugs, barely letting a smirk show. “haru told me you were feeling a bit under the weather lately, so i decided to crash here. i bought curry.” he holds up a bag, and makoto nearly faints at the aroma wafting from it.

later, after dinner, when he falls asleep at the kotatsu, makoto squints up at rin for the last split second of wakefulness when he laughs at something makoto said, and wonders when sunshine got so calming. 

***

“sometimes he’ll stay awake all night,” nitori warns momo grimly.

momo, being fearless and _momo_ , doesn’t listen. it's not really a big deal except now nitori has to clean up their room, because somehow momo makes even more of a mess than he ever did back in his first year. he hadn’t thought it was possible.

“is he always such a hardass?” momo complains, and nitori snorts, because the answer is no, he’s worse. much worse. but he’s gotten better really, and nitori’s spotted him actually taking his meds nowadays.

“it’s your own fault for keeping him up on a day like this. of course he’s going to be grumpy.” he whacks momo on the head with a rolled up magazine and feels a little like he’s channelling rin, and grins to himself. “you’re lucky you didn’t ask him to tutor you later this month, during swim meets.”

“why, what would’ve happened?” momo asks, and nitori wonders how to answer that question, how to describe rin last year without earning a disbelieving laugh. “he stresses out a lot. it gets worse during competition time.”

“oh, so that’s what the meds are for,” momo says, and nitori is almost startled. he doesn’t give the boy enough credit for observation skills, apparently. “he takes those regularly now, though, doesn’t he? nii’san said he was way more worse last year.”

“he was.” nitori had idolized him anyway, because damn, if someone like rin could keep swimming with whatever was holding him back, he could keep swimming too. “also, you shouldn’t be asking your brother this kind of stuff,” he adds belatedly.

“i wanted to know more because i like gou-san!! anyway, he’s like a waxing moon,” momo says, completely missing the point and completely off-topic. nitori looks at him quizzically. “what do you mean?”

“well, that’s what nii’san said,” he sounds defensive at this point, and nitori suppresses his laughter, wondering which matsuoka the mikoshibas actually were crushing on. “he was terrible at first, but it was kind of beyond his control, and then he got better, right?”

nitori hasn’t ever heard the moon cycle described quite that way, and he suspects momo of embellishment on his own (the kid has imagination, that’s for sure) but he nods. “good point.” maybe momo isn’t that much of a dumbass after all.

“good line, isn’t it? i’m going to use it on him the next time i see him.” scratch that, the kid has no instinct of self-preservation.

“you will not. and i’m going to tell him you’re trying to impress gou-san if you try that.”

“nitori-senpai, that’s _mean!_ ”

***

rei doesn’t give compliments lightly, and he is extremely serious when he thinks rin-san moves like a water spirit. it’s different from haruka-senpai’s style, of course. haruka-senpai moves like he is part of the water, like he has reached out and bonded with it on a deep, intrinsic level. rin-san moves in the water the way he moves in social circles: powerful, beautiful, and aware of the power he holds in his grasp.

a year ago he had almost hated him for it. hated the way haruka-senpai had looked broken because of it, but a year ago rin-san had had no idea of the string that bound them so tightly together, that he had any influence at all on any of them.

if you had told rei a year ago that he would be learning how to perfect his stroke from matsuoka rin on a friday afternoon he would have laughed in your face.

today, rei watches him race across the pool and grips the straps of his bag tightly. it feels almost wrong, watching him like this so reverently, but he commits it to memory. it’s not like he’ll be able to see him everyday soon enough. rin will move on to a bigger stage, greener pastures.

rei knows that scientifically, a meteor is just what happens when a comet enters the atmosphere and burns itself out in the process. rin’s a meteor too - the kind whose hand hits the wall just a fraction of a second before the other members and who smiles gladly when he does burn his dazzling streak across the water out, like he’s finally home.

“rei, you’re already here!” he says with a wild grin, when he spots him, and rei’s stomach swoops, because they’re called shooting stars for a reason, and for a split-second rei wonders if he’s allowed to wish on this one.

***

it’s so strange to think of rin sitting on this shore after flinging his goggles at the sea, then realizing that he needs those and gathering them up again frantically, crying all the while. rin laughs when he says it, almost as if he’s expecting haru to snark about it, but all haru can see is the hysterically unhappy kid he had been once, the flashes of that kid he had seen barely a year ago when rin had wrestled him to the ground and cried all over his face.

haru wishes he could be there for him, his hands clenching in the sand beside him, and rin notices. his grin fades. “it was hard, of course.” he looks at the horizon, a little misty-eyed (haru wonders what he has faced, what he has sacrificed, all the times he wasn’t there to see it because they were stupid, stupid teenagers and sometimes that just happened) and then looks back at him, and says, even softer than before. “but you all were there, right beyond, waiting for me to catch up. i couldn’t let myself lose.”

and while haru is all-too-aware now of what that means, the bittersweet connotations of the years they’d lost, he’s hyper-aware of rin slipping his fingers into his palm and grasping it tightly when they get up and leave, the sun going down and setting the ocean ablaze behind them, and that chapter is closed now. maybe they’ll come back to it, some time later. for now, only rin’s fiery hair and sunset eyes matter when he laughs and slips out of haru’s grasp, telling him to race him to the nearest confectionery, as if rin even cares for sweets. as if haru does, beyond the sweetness of rin's hand in his and (one day, one day, _soon_ ) rin's lips beneath his own.

for now, the sunset is beautiful, regardless of what it had been before.

***

+1 

rin takes a deep breath and looks out into the audience. haru holds his hand - gesture of solidarity? something else? he doesn’t have time to think - and nagisa and rei are grinning wildly, and lori sends him (or maybe haru?) a conspiratorial wink. it’s time.

“from when i was very little, i had dreamed of this day. i’d always wanted to make someone proud, you see.” the audience _aww’_ s, and haru grasps his arm tighter. he doesn’t know how to tell him he’s okay, he’s not makoto. but he can handle this, just with his words instead. “my dad would have been proud of me, i think.”

“he would,” sousuke mock-yells from the seats, and everyone laughs.

 _he would,_ haru’s hand says, relaxing his grasp, turning into something more intimate. he’s getting the hang of this telepathy thing.

“by the time i grew up, i was in a dilemma, however. whom was i swimming for? i’d forgotten, just for a while, you see.” he turns around to face haru, who finally cracks a smile, and he’s pretty sure he’s sporting a matching blush. he knows gou is, murmuring translations to his speech to his foster parents, making lori clap her hand over her mouth. “this guy here reminded me, but more importantly - i had grown up, and instead of losing everything, like i’d imagined, i’d found more people to swim for instead. my team - my family. you’ve nurtured me from when i was barely old enough to come up to nagisa’s knees –”

“not the height jokes _again_ , rin-chan!” laughter abounds again.

“- and yet,” he continues, eyes shining, “i hadn’t really given anything back.”

there are protests, and rin waits for them to stop before he speaks out again. “today, this is me, giving something back - the only thing i’m capable of.”

haru’s hand in his feels like courage solidified, and he inhales.

“thank you. thank you for everything you’ve ever done for me - mom, gou, sousuke,” beaming at the couple in front of him, “russell, lori,” a nod at the sniffling samezuka kids, “nitori, momotarou,” smiling at the iwatobi kids, both old and new. “makoto, nagisa, rei,” finally letting his fingers clasp haru’s own hand. “haru.” he turns to meet haru’s glittering eyes for a split second before turning to the crowd again. he shifts to english, for the benefit of his foster family. “thank you, for being my guiding light.”

“thank you for being my moon and sun and stars.”

**Author's Note:**

> OMAKE:
> 
> "pffft onii'chan, don't use game of thrones dialogue, you nerd," gou says, crying, and another matsuoka bellows "SHUT UP, STUPID LITTLE SISTER," in english while crying himself. rei announces that AVPM references aren't allowed either, and lori smiles a satisfied little smile when she sees haruka's still holding on to rin's hand.
> 
> (moms know keepers when they see 'em.)


End file.
